


Vode An: Still a Few Bugs, or How Gregor Learned to Fly

by B_Radley



Series: The Laughing Beskad [11]
Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fulcrum is So Over Their Shit, Gen, On-the-job-training, Redemption, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 17:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11339706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: Do-gooding needs a retirement plan.





	Vode An: Still a Few Bugs, or How Gregor Learned to Fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



Gregor lies back with his feet on the pilot’s console of the old surplus _Nu_ class shuttle. He had been left behind by King and J’ohlana for, well, he didn’t actually know why he had been left behind.

He had his suspicions that the ex-Jedi, once known as Taliesin Croft, and the former Nite Owl, were most probably in a secluded alcove somewhere with their buckets up and their trousers down. He smiles gently at the new dynamic between his two fellow warriors. _Took them long enough._

The former commando did not begrudge his _vode_ their feelings. He had no interest in their activities. But he was assured of his place in this strange little family. Both of them had, at one time or another, held him and rocked him to sleep when the night terrors overwhelmed him. When his ghosts had spoken too loudly to him.

He knew that both of their ghosts interrupted their slumber as well.

Croft's, the death of his kind, killed by his brothers in an uncontrollable slaughter. A slaughter instigated by one man, fostered by chips that had robbed them of their will.

There was something to be said for head trauma. Head trauma that had rendered Gregor’s inoperable enough for him to eventually have it removed.

His mind goes back to Croft and his ghosts. One in particular, a young Togruta Jedi that had been part of his life before the war. One that had been forced from the Jedi; one that he had reconnected with in a changed relationship. 

J’ohlana’s ghosts were not her own, but those of her ledger. A parade of beings that her former organization, Death Watch had slaughtered. Until that same young Jedi had unknowingly shown her another way. A way of light and redemption.

A way that had brought the three of them to this godforsaken hole of a planet. A way that she could be redeemed, and Croft and Gregor could save several of their brothers from the war.

A tip from a mysterious operative that Jo had made contact with. An operative who knew things and shared those things with as few as possible. An operative known only as Fulcrum.

A tip coupled with codes and more information from a slicer that Gregor had found. The information had brought them here to a spaceport that didn’t even have docking bays, only landing fields.

Had brought them on the shaky information that three of the former _vode_ had been sold into slavery by one of their fleshborn Imperial officers.

A cacophony of noise starts to waft into the open canopy of the cockpit. Gregor opens his eyes and tries to focus on the sounds.

His eyes widen and he sits up as he sees a large crowd of locals, armed with various primitive weapons running towards the ship. He curses as he sees what is in front of him.

A figure clad in mismatched GAR commando armor streaked with green infused with black. Another, slighter figure with fine, hand-forged _beskar’gam_ clutching his hand.

And being half-dragged with him. Gregor clinches his teeth as he sees three figures just behind them, in front of the mob.

Three figures with his own face, clad in rags. Well cared-for sharpened tools in their hands.

The lead clone hurls and ax at the running pair. It glances off King’s armor. He hears a dry voice, in his earpiece, breathing hard with increased respirations. “ _Gregor’ika_ , sweetie, do you think that you might begin to, oh, maybe _start the kriffing engines_? Maybe lifting off?” J’ohlana Wren’s voice, normally marked by snark and laughter, is tense.

Gregor slams the canopy panel shut and starts to frantically look around the cockpit controls. His brief orientation to shuttles and flight as an ARC and a commando officer is gone in the instant of trying save his family.

His eyes light on the ‘emergency engine start’ switch. 

Nothing happens. He closes his eyes, as he has seen countless Jedi do, and tries to clear the fog from his mind. His eyes snap open with a new purpose and light in them. He eases the throttle forward and pushes the button, slowly, deliberately.

The engines cough and catch. Gregor smile.

There is a slight scraping sound as the shuttle lifts a few feet above the muddy ground and rotates. He winces slightly, but calms as he figures out something that he knows how to do.

He squeezes the trigger on the sidestick.

The dual cannon on each side spit green bursts of light. 

“Gregor! You nearly took my damned head off,” comes the familiar Corellian inflection. “Ease up on the stick! Dammit, watch the building!”

“They shouldn’t have put one there,” he yells into the comm, as the wings swing down on top of the tiny shed.

He smiles as he sees the pursuers scatter. He gooses the stick forward.

Both of his family members duck as he gives it too much again. The first time he had done this, above an Imperial data center, he had only had to hold the ship steady in a hover and move in to let Jo and Tal come to him.

He hadn’t had to take off, as well as fight off an angry mob.

He feels the pilot’s seat descend into the entry way. A pair of warm green eyes, their owner shaking in silent laughter, stands in the entry way. “Think that Jo might have some words for you, for what you did to her baby,” Croft says.

“I told you that I am better suited for the ground. It’s why we had zoomies and deck-apes.” Jo walks up to him and kisses him on the cheek. “Don’t listen to him, _vod_. He is just mad because those clones mistook him for an actual Imperial commando.”

“What happened?” he asks. “Apparently our intel was a bit delayed. They had led a slave revolt a few days ago.” Her eyes grow sad. “They killed the overseers and owners. They thought we had come to put them down.”

Gregor climbs out of pilot’s seat. “I got it,” King says. 

“Guess the _Vode An_ movement still needs some practice at do-gooding,' the ex-General says.

Gregor hauls both into his arms. “Maybe so. But thank you for trying to free them.”

~+~+~+~+~+

The operative known as Fulcrum watches a recording from a backwater world’s tiny spaceport field. Her blue eyes grow thunderous as she watches a Phase II clad figure and a smaller, _beskar’garm_ clad figure running for their lives to a battered black Republic relic. She watches the shuttle attempt to hover and turn, colliding with several objects on its maneuvers, before firing its blaster cannon and dispersing the pursuing crowds.

 _Almost wish there was a soundtrack for this_. Her expression softens as she watches her newest cell. A unique cell, from all accounts, dedicated to freeing former clones and other slaves from lives of despair.

She punches her comm, masking her voice. “Balor,” a dry voice answers.

‘The _Vode An_ are active,” she says in a high, young voice. “Got a few bugs, but I think that they will do fine.”


End file.
